Mr. Kushner,
I congratulate you on your appointment as senior advisor to your father-in-law, President Donald Trump. This is a great honor for you, and you now play a major role in shaping the future of the United States.
I write this to you as one Jew to another. Although our political viewpoints may differ, we both anchor our lives in the uplifting and sacred values of Judaism. Your grandparents were survivors of the Holocaust and embraced by this country as immigrants. I know that you were educated in Orthodox day schools that I am sure provided you with a strong foundation in the moral and ethical teachings of our Jewish tradition. It is wonderful that your wife Ivanka converted to Judaism, and that you are now raising three children in a home filled with Jewish values.
I think most Americans want President Trump to succeed as our leader. However, he has said many things during the campaign that are of great concern, and now during his first weeks in office he has taken many actions that are extremely difficult to reconcile with Jewish values. We know that in Judaism words are sacred and cannot be taken back. How was the world created? With words. We create worlds with our words.
I am writing this to you with respect for all your outstanding accomplishments and with the hope that you can help to infuse his presidency with Jewish values that shape your life. Here are just some of the Jewish values that I have to assume anchor your life, which seem to be absent in the decisions made during the first week of his presidency:
On his first full day of office, he went to the CIA and stood in a place that is kadosh, sacred, the Memorial Wall. On that wall are 117 stars representing men and women who gave their lives for this country. In Judaism, we strive to live lives that are kadosh and we are taught to respect kadosh in space and time. He made no mention of where he stood but used it as an opportunity to attack the media and to talk about the crowd at his inauguration. Indeed, he said supportive words about the CIA. Words have great meaning in Judaism. Can those words erase all the demeaning words he has said about our intelligence community?
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, he signed a presidential order that bars Syrian refugees as well as Muslim refugees from six other countries from entering America (though that ban has since been suspended by the courts). As a grandson of Holocaust survivors, how does one reconcile that position with your own past? As you know so well, our country refused to take in many Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. The Syrian people are victims of a dictatorship and of the radical terrorist group ISIS. You are well aware of the Jewish value of pikuah nefesh — of saving the lives of those in need. This principle even supersedes Shabbat observance. This is a core tenet of Judaism. Quotas turned Jews away during World War II, and the St. Louis was turned back to Germany. Yes, there are terrorists in the world, but to treat all Muslims as terrorists is a tragic mistake, reflecting a misunderstanding of Islam that goes against the best of Jewish and American values.
A core value of Judaism is to welcome the stranger — “because we were once strangers in the land of Egypt.” That line dominates so many of our Jewish values. Yes, people from Mexico and other countries, have come into this country illegally, for a variety of reasons. Yes, there are people who should be deported. But how about all those people who have come here, have worked through legal channels and are contributing so much of this country. Are we not a country of immigrants? Have Jews not found a safe haven here in America? The President’s actions are terrifying so many people with Green Cards and even citizens who are frightened that they will be expelled from this country.
During the campaign and since taking office, there have been continued attacks against one of the most important institutions of a democracy: a free press. A free press is an anchor of democracy. Journalism is a profession with many people of great integrity, and, like any profession, there are people who do not meet professional standards. Asking questions is at the core of Judaism. This is the foundation of Jewish learning. Questions are considered critically important for the wellbeing of the community. Also, as you know, even in our great canon of Jewish law and legend, the Talmud, we record the majority and the minority opinion; we record the discussion; we record differing opinion. Limiting the freedom of the press has been a cornerstone of totalitarian societies that went on to take away the rights of Jews and many other minorities.
Finally, I hope that you will keep close to your heart as you counsel the President, the values I am sure are imbued in your lifestyle as an observant Jew: Kavod — respect for all people, respect for democratic institutions; rachamim — compassion, the ability to empathize with the most vulnerable, the mandate to be fair to all people as stated in the powerful words of the Holiness Code in Leviticus 19; tzedek, tzedek tirdof — pursue justice in every way conceivable. I ask you to always consider the words of Isaiah that we read on Yom Kippur: “Learn to do good. Devote yourselves to justice; aid the wronged. Uphold the rights of the orphan; defend the cause of the widow.”
Jared, my prayers are with you and with the President of the United States. I hope that you will both keep the words of one Jewish refugee, Albert Einstein, in mind in your deliberations and decisions: “America is today the hope of all honorable men who respect the rights of their fellow men and who believe in the principle of freedom and justice.”
WHY BRINGING IN SYRIAN REFUGEES IS
DESTRUCTIVE FOR THEM AND DANGEROUS FOR AMERICA
By Tatiana Menaker
Letter, written by a tender-hearted
rabbi, started with the words from Old Testament: “You must love the outsider,
for you too, were once outsiders in the land of Egypt”. The letter announced
that 250 synagogues have opportunity partnering with HIAS and churches to
resettle 50 Syrian refugee families in Worchester County after intensive 18-24
months of the vetting process.
Only a person
like me, who went through the psychological trauma of immigration, can
comprehend and explain the absurdity of this plan.
Bringing Syrian families to the US means
depriving them of their cultural identity, their language, their friends,
relatives, and destroying their relationships with their wives and children.
For the price of resettlement of 50
families in the US, safe zone for 450 families can be built in Syria itself or
any neighboring Muslim country (refugee safety zones already exist in Syria,
Turkey, and on request of President Trump are being built in Jordan and Saudi
Arabia ) under supervision of Red Cross or similar international organization,
and refugees can return back to their hometowns, when military hostilities are
over.
For some reason, people refuse to
understand huge differences in cultures and religions, as well as the fact,
that the nations located in just 7-8 hours of air travel from New York can dwell
in the different millennium. They do not
understand that in the Muslim society women and children are the property of
men. This is the reason of so many honor killings in the Muslim migrant
families in the US and Europe. Children, especially girls, are starting to live
and date by Western customs, but for their fathers, it is a horrible insult of
their honor, loss of property and castration of their dignity.
In the US Muslim immigrant parents are
losing their children. Fathers are losing their power over them, because they are
no longer providers they used to be. They are becoming deaf and mute recipients
of government handouts sometimes for decades, people with no language, with no
driving skills, when even 16-year-olds drive, lowest of lowest, and what is the
worst – they are ridiculed by their own
sons and daughters for their funny English and an embarrassing behavior.
In ten years Syrian refugees will be totally
alienated from their children because children will live in a different much advanced
century with different time speed and high stress unimaginable in their previous
Middle Eastern slow life. Their children will exist in reality, which their
parents, who immigrated as adults, would practically never embrace due to
completely different cultural background. During 10-15 years it is hardly
possible to overcome the missing couple of centuries.
In the Middle East people live in
extended families. They are intensely connected with multiple uncles and aunts,
cousins and nephews, with their close friends. This is their way of survival.
You can not bring all this huge clan of people into the US. This is another painful
trauma of immigration. All those people, left in the home country, will become
dead for them, torn away forever. Welfare and minimum wage jobs do not pay for
intercontinental flights. Nostalgia for this
warm system of support, for lost friends and relations is one of the main
reasons for depression, well known to psychiatrists, who work for émigré mental
health services.
Even brought up on Western European
values, highly educated Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union, the elite of
Soviet intelligentsia, despite even being fluent in English, had the adjustment
problems.
In the majority of Muslim families women
are semi-literate or illiterate. They tend to raise illiterate or semi-literate
children, whose adjustment in the digital society is very questionable. This is
why after five years in Germany from one million Middle Eastern refugees only
35,000 are working. This is why in France not migrants themselves, who often
end up as baggage handlers at the airports, but their teenage and 20
plus-year-old angry children starting pogroms in Nice and Paris senselessly
destroying stores with merchandise, they could never afford.
Also bringing Syrian refugees to the US
is the act of bringing to the country the cinder box, time bombs and maybe
something worse. Children can not be vetted while THEY are the most dangerous
part of Syrian and any other Muslim immigration.
Look at all terrorist acts. They are mostly
were done by born in the US CHILDREN of refugees or by those who came to the US
as children – from Boston Marathon Tsarnaev brothers to San Bernardino where one
was born here, the other was an immigrant from Pakistan.
Like for the Tsarnaevs or Omar Mateen it is incredibly difficult for
children from mid-eastern countries to assimilate in new society as they are
torn between their parents’ values and the values of a new country. They are often
raised by illiterate mothers, who have been deprived of normal communication
and of life experience by Muslim religion: majority of Muslim girls after 8
years of age are not allowed to talk to men other than their fathers, to leave
the house without escort of male relative, and travel alone (forget about
work). They spend their lives surrounded by other women and children. This
situation largely limits their mental and social development, makes them
fearful of new environment and alienates them from American culture.
In turn this alienation breeds hatred to
the feeding hand – the country, which provided them with generous handouts. I
still remember Tsarnaev’s mother’s hatred for America (they all been living years
without working, receiving free food,
free apartment, free medical services of such quality, that in their own
country only acting president could
have). I remember hatred for America of Muslim women, screaming f…ck America,
because their husband (it was two of them) was indicted for welfare fraud. They were sure that in America they all are entitled
to everything free and forever.
The hatred resulting from alienation
poisons the poorly educated children who are angry, because they very rarely
can reach positions above security guards. (A lot of terrorists in Paris and
US, including Omar Mateen, worked as security guards.)
Some desperate young Muslim immigrants
experiencing identity crisis find the refuge in radical Islam which does not
require education. Everyone can pull the trigger or place the bomb, or drive
the truck into the crowd.
It is the collision with the future,
called by Alvin Toffler “Future shock”, fear of incomprehensible reality, and
intuitive understanding that they can not adjust, which turns to Radical Islam
thousands of young Muslims in many countries. They can not absorb stress and
complexity of the new world and to return back to imagined nostalgic
simplicity, power over women and slow pace of medieval times.
In order to understand mentality of
Muslim refugees and their chances to adjust in Western Judeo-Christian society,
one needs to turn to Koran;
“ O ye who believe! Take not the Jews
and Christians for friends. [Surah V, v. 51] “
“Fight against such of those [Jews and
Christians] … until they pay for the tribute readily, being brought
low.[Surah IX, v. 29] “
Any Jewish person, who ever read Koran’s lines about Jews would run away
from Muslims as fast and as far as possible.
“Allah fighteth against them [the Jews].
How perverse they are!”[Surah IX, v. 30]
They [the Jews] spread evil in the land
…. [Surah V, v. 62-66]
Eventually, the Yahudis (Jews) will be
selected and killed. The swine will be killed and the cross broken. People will
revert to Islam. Wars will end, and people will return to their respective
countries.
Later Hadiths (appearing in the 1930s
and 1940s under the influence of Hajj Amin Husseini) indicated that
“The resurrection of the dead will not come until the Muslims will
war with the Jews and the Muslims will kill (exterminate) them.”
Let’s imagine the best case scenario, in
which Syrian refugees, who are Muslims, will not become terrorists, will
smoothly adjust in American society and become average American citizens. Do
you think their children join pro-Israeli groups on university campuses? Or
they likely will join anti-Israeli anti-Semitic mobs, consisting mostly from
Palestinian Arabs and other Middle Easterners, who harass and threaten Jewish
students? Guess?
Do you think they will vote for
pro-Israeli senators and congressmen, who think that Israel has legitimate
right to exist and Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel? Or for those
who likely will vote for moving Israel to indefensible borders of 1967 and for
giving the land of Israel to make-believe created by KGB “Palestinian people”
with no language and history and any signs of existence before 1948? Guess?
I understand the interest of HIAS,
which needs ANY refugees in order to receive with other charity groups fat government
resettlement funds to stay on the payroll. For this so sweet goal they are
absolutely ready to betray Jewish interests. But rabbis, who are suppose to be
wise? But synagogue elders who from historic experience need to must know that
if people were raised with the idea to kill the Jews, they usually do. To be so
gullible as to bring sworn Jewish enemies into our backyard, hoping that they
become friends?
The already incredibly long list of
victims of Islamic terrorism is increasing tenfold all over the world. Terrorists
ALWAYS die with their victims, which reminds of old story about Scorpion and
Frog: stung by scorpion, the frog, that is carrying him over the pond, exclaimed,
“Why did you do it? We both will drown and die!” “I can not help it,” answered
scorpion, “It is my nature!”
Or the poem about a tender hearted
woman, who saved half-frozen snake?
…She stroked his pretty skin again and
kissed and held him tight
Instead of saying thanks, the snake gave
her a vicious bite…
“I saved you,” cried the woman
“And you’ve bitten me, but why?
You know your bite is poisonous and now
I’m going to die”
“Oh shut up, silly woman,”
said the reptile with a grin
“You knew damn well I was a snake
before you took me in…
The Scorpion and Frog story and “The
Snake” poem are symbolic images of valiantly saved refugees that turned into
terrorists and enemies. Maybe this fable and this poem will bring into the
heads of rabbis drunk with self-admiring benevolence some sobriety? Or
welcoming and cheering Muslim refugees is just an expression of Jewish suicidal
tendencies?